Another great weekend...and new stamps!

I got back last night from a lovely weekend at Crafts U Love near Horley in Surrey. As I was arriving on the friday there was an almighty thunderstorm with very dramatic fork lightning and hailstones...typical July weather I suppose! On saturday I was demonstrating in the morning and teaching in the afternoon - one workshop was about using alcohol inks with metallic film and stamps and the second was using Cherry the cat stamps. Sunday was demonstrations again and then a workshop on making a box of delights with a butterfly theme. It was great to meet lots of new people as well as catching up with familiar faces.

I caught up with Jennette and her mum who I haven't seen for a couple of years - Jennette has lost over nine stone since I last saw her, so I did a double take! They were staying at the same hotel as me, so we had a lovely couple of hours with Paula and Geoff (on the right), the lovely couple who run Crafts U Love...nice to have time to talk as we rarely get a chance to.

Next is a picture of my, as usual, messy table, filled with alcohol inks which I was using on peel offs, with stamps, on metallic film, acetate and gloss card...messy but fun! Lastly you can see Paula's mum having a root about in my suitcase....with my permission! I had samples of new stamps in there and everyone was having a look. Check out Crafts U Love website and blog for more pictures.

My journey home was slightly fraught as the underground had a lot of line closures because of weekend engineering works. I was given all sorts of conflicting directions, and went on several tube trains before I finally got to Euston....I was the mad woman careering through the station, bags flying everywhere and muttering "get out of the way" as I ran through the crowds and just caught my train! I didn't want a repeat of the last incident at Euston!

So, as you will have gathered, Personal Impressions have new stamp designs about to be released. The ladies this weekend had a sneaky peek, but I will be demonstrating some of my designs for the first time at the weekend extravaganza at Dawn Bibby's Design Studio and Oswaldtwistle Mill...I'm usually up at the Mill along with Leonie and Sarah as well as Amy,Brenda, Jayne and Mary. If you would like a sneaky peek though, pop onto the Personal Impressions website (on my links at the side) and check them out. There are loads of new designs, but if you did want to know which are mine, just put my name into the search bar and all my stamps will come up. I have done a larger Cherry design as so many people had asked for one - hope you like it! As well as penguins, snowmen, owls etc. I am working on card samples this week, so, for those of you who can't get up to see us I shall pop photos on next week of course.

For those of you who are coming along, please remember to bring ATC's to swap! I'll post again before the weekend, Lindsay

What a nightmare!

Hello everyone, what a nightmare start to my day I had! I was all set to get cracking on some projects that need to be done "yesterday" and the first job was to get out some stamps. I'd decided which ones to use last night and was already dreading the usual search amongst my, less than organised, collection! Apart from the boxes of stamps that are dotted about the place, my main collection is held in a three drawer unit that, admittedly, was not designed to hold hundreds of wooden blocks! There was I, rummaging through the layers, when the whole set of drawers completely collapsed!!! Yes, all three drawers gave up the ghost and all my stamps ended up in piles buried under each other and the remains of the drawers....wonderful! So my stamps are now sitting in the empty frame of the unit waiting for me to come up with a new storage solution...I think that some stackable trays are in order. I am now waiting for another crash, as the top of the, now drawerless unit, is weighed down with boxes of ink pads, peel offs, powders and a hundred other things. So long as the floor doesn't give way I wil cope, and, yes, I did eventually find the stamps that I was looking for!
I've taken some new photographs of the boxes, as promised, though they are still not as good as I'd like as it is rather dull here today. I'll be teaching these on two workshops at Dawn's Design Studio, one in June and the other in November. They aren't a new idea, and are a variation of the Exploding Boxes that many of us have made. But I had great fun making them, so I hope that you like them. The first one was made with papers from one of the latest K&Co ranges called Que Sera Sera (they are absolutely stunning by the way!) and I've used one of their adhesive borders around the lid. Inside the box are birds from my Swirly Birds clear stamps set which I've combined with the tiny flower from the "Count My Blessings" stamp set.
This picture shows the inside of another box and I used some of the alcohol inked metallic film and stamped butterflies onto it before cutting them out and adhering them onto acetate strips. I went a bit mad with the adhesive gems as you can see! No picture of the outside of this one as the image didn't come out very well.The last box is a little different as I had an idea to use the Owl stamp full sized on the outside whilst doing shrink plastic versions on the inside and I knew that I wanted to create a tree effect. After some thought I came up with the idea of a piece of black corrugated card which I cut into a wedge shape and then cut "twiggy" shapes into the diagonal edge. I rolled the card up with the tallest edge in the middle and stuck it into the bottom of the box - my must have product, Glossy Accents, came to the rescue for this job, as it stuck the spiral of card into place within a minute so that I wasn't forced to hold it for an age whilst it set! A little more Glossy Accents around the edges strengthened the bond and allowed me to add glitter for a slightly mystical look. The Owls were coloured with watered down Marvy Le Plume pens and I used a gold Just Glitter marker to add sparkle and a warm colour so that they look like Barn Owls when the light shines through them. I also coloured the beaks in gold to highlight them. I'll admit that I did make about twelve more shrinky owls before I was happy with the final three!!!

Apologies for the less than brilliant pictures, but I hope that they give an idea of what the boxes look like, and hope that they might inspire you to have a go. My friend Sarah has posted some photos of the weekend up at Oswaldtwistle Mills, so check out her blog (in my blog list) to see those...hooray, no pictures of me this time!!! Also check out MyTobyJug blog where Joanne has also posted some great pictures.

Well, I am going to have a cup of raspberry tea now and then back to those stamping projects! Lindsay